Archive for the ‘films’ Category
Best of 2022

Film:
Elvis
Last year: –
Foreign-Language Film:
Hit the Road
Last year: –
Documentary:
Nothing Compares
This Much I Know to be True
TS Eliot: Into ‘The Waste Land’
Last year: –
Male Lead:
Austin Butler – Elvis
Tom Hanks – A Man Called Otto
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
Bill Nighy – Living
Last year: –
Female Lead:
Carey Mulligan – She Said
Olivia Coleman – Empire of Light
Last year: –
Male Support:
Brendan Gleason – The Banshees of Inisherin
Anthony Hopkins – Armageddon Time
Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans
Last year: –
Female Support:
Mariana Trevino – A Man Called Otto
Michelle Williams – The Fabelmans
Last year: –
Director:
Baz Luhrmann – Elvis
Last year: –
Writer:
Martin McDonagh – The Banshees of Inisherin
Last year: –
Editing:
Jonathan Redmond & Matt Villa – Elvis
Last year: –
Cinematography:
Jamie Ramsay – Living
Roger Deakins – Empire of Light
Charlotte Bruus Christensen – All the Old Knives
Last year: –
Film Music:
Elvis
Last year: –
Single/Song:
Grace – Kae Tempest
Running Up That Hill – Kate Bush
Last year: –
Album:
Black Acid Soul – Lady Blackbird
The Line is a Curve – Kae Tempest
Last year: –
Gig:
Lady Blackbird – Barbican
Kae Tempest – Brighton Dome
La Voix Humaine & Les Mamelles de Tirésias – Glyndebourne
Last year: –
Play:
Jerusalem (Apollo, Shaftesbury Ave)
Last year: –
Art Exhibition:
Post-War Modern: new art in Britain 1945-65 (Barbican)
Last year: –
Book:
Good Pop Bad Pop – Jarvis Cocker
Four Thousand Weeks – Oliver Burkemann
The Big Goodbye – Sam Wasson
The Promise – Damon Galgut
Last year: –
TV:
SAS Rogue Heroes (BBC)
The Offer (Paramount)
Last year: –
Podcast:
Soul Music (BBC)
Last Year: –
Sport:
England at World Cup in Qatar
Last Year: –
Dance:
–
Last Year: –
Event:
The Queen’s Jubilee video with Paddington
The wreck of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance being found on the sea floor, in a remarkably good state of preservation
…contrasted by sinking of the warship Moskva in the Black Sea and the immortal “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!”
The abject failure of Liz Truss and her rapid sinking, beaten even by a lettuce
[professional] Sharing a screen credit with Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
Dearly departed:
Terry Hall, Keith Levine, Pharoah Sanders, Jean-Luc Godard, Lamont Dozier, David Warner, Claes Oldenburg, Monty Norman, James Caan, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Paula Rego, Jack Higgins, William Hurt, Shane Warne, Ivan Reitman, Gorbachev, Monica Vitti, Norma Waterson, Michael Lang, Sidney Poitier, Maxi Jazz, Pele, Vivienne Westwood & Jordan.
Best of 2020 and links to earlier Bests Of [there is no Best of 2021 …yet]

SMART – The London International Smartphone Film Festival
The launch of SMART – the London International Smartphone Film Festival – set up by Adam Gee & Victoria Mapplebeck was covered in this week’s Observer in a piece by Arts & Media Correspondent Vanessa Thorpe:


The full article is here

The Watergate Scandal game (1973)
Following up the recent post on Irish Free State Monopoly here’s another game with historic resonance preserved for posterity. The Watergate Scandal dates from 1973 and cost a less than scandalous $2.99 at the time. It is a card game with political points made in a mild satirical fashion.







This (Washington) post is dedicated to Alfie Dennen, creator of Evil Corps game, which features thinly veiled portraits of the likes of the current owner of the Washington Post. A post on the excellent Evil Corps will follow shortly.
As with the vintage Irish Monopoly set, this card game also features in Google Arts & Culture thanks to The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
For the youngsters among us, a brief reminder of what the Watergate Scandal was all about. It was the mother of modern political scandals, unravelling in Washington DC from 1971 to 1974. So it was ongoing when this game came out. It took down the grim administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon and led to his resignation.
The scandal was rooted in the administration’s hopelessly inept attempts to cover up its involvement in a break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in D.C. on 17th June 1972. The five burglars were arrested and then the press (noticeably Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post) and the Justice Department connected the cash found on the perpetrators to the Nixon re-election campaign committee. Witnesses at the subsequent Senate Watergate hearings testified that Nixon had approved plans to cover up administration involvement in the break-in and that there was a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office hence all the tapping/bugging references in the game.
Later in 1973 the House commenced an impeachment process against Nixon. The Supreme Court ruled that the President had to release the Oval Office tapes to government investigators. The tapes cooked Nixon’s goose. The House Judiciary Committee charged him with obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress. Nixon resigned on 9th August 1974 before the house could impeach him and the Senate remove him from office. Tricky Dicky remains the only U.S. president to have resigned.
The name Watergate came to stand for a variety of clandestine and illegal activities by the Nixon administration, from bugging the offices of political opponents through ordering investigations of activist groups to using the FBI, CIA and IRS as political tools. Between Nam and Watergate the good ol’ US of A lost its trust and became the cynical and conspiracy-crazy place we know & love today.
Inspired by fork-tongued Nixon, The Watergate Scandal is basically a game of lying and bluffing (like many card games – and political activities). To see how to play it, this recent episode of Game Board Archaeology featuring Hunter and Rob Mattison captures it pretty well.
The game was produced in Illinois in Elk Grove Village, 20 miles northwest of Chicago, next to O’Hare International Airport. Its current population is some 35,000. Its original population were Potawatomi, speakers of an Algonquin language. They were booted off their land in the 1830s and relocated to Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Stepping into the void created by men right up there with Tricky Dicky on the evil stakes came pioneer farmers from New England. Their civilisation reached its zenith when Elk Grove became the largest industrial park in the United States. The Watergate Scandal card game was the jewel in the crown of that mighty industrial estate.
Three years after the game we got the real silver lining of Watergate, William Goldman (scr.) and Alan Pakula’s (dir.) All The President’s Men, a film practically guaranteed to turn young viewers into journalists.

Coincidence No. 541 – J’accuse

When I look at Facebook this morning the first thing I see is a post from the past (2015) on its anniversary. It was a reminder that today’s the day (13th January in 1898) that Émile Zola accused the French government/establishment of anti-semitism in the letter J’Accuse. Yesterday was the day (in 2015) the French government sent armed troops in to guard Jewish schools. I also published a second post on the subject that same day 5 years ago (the Charlie Hebdo shooting had been the previous week on 7th January 2015): Today’s the day (in 1898) Émile Zola published the letter J’Accuse in a French newspaper. He was convicted of libel. Then took refuge in London. #jesuischarlie


I am watching the 1969 British film The Magic Christian this evening. It contains a Who’s Who of the 60s of swinging London including Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski and Raquel Welch. Raquel plays a bikinied Amazon (echoes of her fur bikini in One Million Years BC, 1966) in a scene parodying the slave galley scene in Spartacus). Among the first words out of her mouth are “J’accuse!”.
Priestess of the Whip (Raquel Welch):
In, out.
[Groaning]
In, out!
[Groaning continues]
In, out. In…
During my reign as Priestess of the Whip, I’ve never seen such unmitigated sloth.
Passenger: My god! What’s going on here?
Priestess of the Whip:
J’accuse!
How dare this intrusion? Who are these people?
Youngman Grand (Ringo Starr): Oh, these are me mates.
Priestess of the Whip: Out! Out!
[Groans]
Passenger: Oh, I say! Do that again.
Priestess of the Whip: Out! Out! Out of my galley!
I was watching the film because tomorrow night Entertainment Attorney and Executive Producer Vinca Jarrett, who I met last year in Duluth, Minnesota when I was doing a speech on diversity in TV entitled Not The Usual Suspects, is putting on an online film discussion group which I’m really looking forward to. These kinds of online communal activity, like Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties, at their best are one of the silver linings of Covid Lockdown, generating a genuine sense of shared experience and contact.
While I was at it I made an edit to the Magic Christian entry on Wikipedia, noting the fleeting appearance of John & Yoko in the movie. My first ever article published on Wikipedia was the one on User-Generated Content. And here we are some two decades later with WordPress and its over-refined self-publishing service with these difficult to manipulate Blocks and generally over-boiled interface. In two days’ time it is the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia – launched 15th January 2001. The scale, accuracy and relative lack of conflict around this pooling of the world’s knowledge online is a testimony to what people can do together for no money. In contrast to the theme explored by The Magic Christian, which is that everyone has their price.

What I learnt from Michael Apted

It was sad to hear of the passing of Michael Apted on Saturday. His ‘Up’ series is one of the great achievements of documentary film and could never be replicated in the industry and the world as it is now. This is what I learnt from him when we crossed paths in Rome two years ago.
Best of 2020

Film:
Lovers Rock
Babyteeth
Nomadland
The White Tiger
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Another Round
Queen & Slim
Le Corbeau, Vertigo
Last year: Joker, Mid90s
Foreign-Language Film:
The White Tiger
Another Round
Les Miserables (2019)
Last year: Parasite
Documentary:
Crip Camp
Dick Johnson is Dead
Last year: Rolling Thunder Review
Male Lead:
Anthony Hopkins – The Father
Adarsh Gourav – The White Tiger
Tom Hanks – News of the World
Ralph Fiennes – The Dig
Mads Mikkelsen – Another Round
Last year: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
Female Lead:
Frances McDormand – Nomadland
Michelle Pfeiffer – French Exit
Eliza Scanlen – Babyteeth
Kate Winslet – Ammonite
Jodie Turner-Smith – Queen & Slim
Last year: Elizabeth Debicki (Virginia, Vita & Virginia)
Male Support:
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Mauritanian
Mark Rylance – The Trial of the Chicago 7
Sacha Baron Cohen – The Trial of the Chicago 7
Last year: Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin in Joker
Female Support:
Helena Zengel – News of the World
Glenn Close – Hillbilly Elegy
Saoirse Ronan – Ammonite
Olivia Coleman – The Father
Last year: Kaitlyn Dever as Amy in Booksmart
Director:
Steve McQueen – Lovers Rock
Shannon Murphy – Babyteeth
Thomas Vinterberg – Another Round
Ramin Bahrani – The White Tiger
Last year: Todd Phillips (Joker), Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)
Writer:
Ramin Bahrani – The White Tiger
News of the World – Paul Greengrass & Luke Davies
The Trial of the Chicago 7 – Aaron Sorkin (though I don’t generally like him as a writer, too many words)
Rita Kalnejais – Babyteeth
Last year: Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)
Editing:
?
Last year: ?
Cinematography:
Andrew Commis – Babyteeth
Paolo Carnera – The White Tiger
Dariusz Wolski – News of the World
Hoyte van Hoytema – Tenet
Last year: Roger Deakins – 1917
Film Music:
Lovers Rock
Last year: Rolling Thunder Review
Single/Song:
Long Tailed Winter Bird – Paul McCartney
Reborn a Queen – Naughty Alice
Kunta Kinte Dub – The Revolutionaries
Last year: Lately – Celeste
Album:
McCartney III – Paul McCartney
Letter to You – Bruce Springsteen
Last year: Ghosteen – Nick Cave
Gig:
Sarah Jane Morris – Ronnie Scott’s
ROE – The Waiting Room
A Bowie Celebration – Empire, Shepherd’s Bush
Last year: Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets (Roundhouse)
Play:
0
Last year: A Taste of Honey (Trafalgar Studios)
Art Exhibition:
London Calling (Museum of London) – the only one I got to this year 😦
A Surge of Power by Marc Quinn going up on the base of the deposed Colston statue, Bristol
Boy & Bear – Brandon Hill, Bristol (thanks to Dylan on my birthday)
Last year: Van Gogh in Britain (Tate B)
Book:
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller
The Plague – Albert Camus
Summer – Ali Smith
Last year: A Woman of No Importance – Sonia Purnell; The Quiet American
TV:
Lovers Rock (BBC)
The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)
The Crown – S4 (Amazon)
The Romantics and Us (BBC2)
The Bridge S1
Last year: After Life (Netflix)
Podcast:
Heavyweight
Adam Buxton
The Happiness Lab
Last Year: 13 Minutes to the Moon
Sport:
Spurs 2 – Arsenal 1 (11.7.20)
Dance:
Mam (Sadlers Wells)
Last Year: The Red Shoes (Sadlers Wells)
Event:
Statue of Edward Colston being chucked in Bristol harbour
The Winter Solstice at Newgrange, Ireland
Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties
Dearly departed:
- Andy Taylor (with whom I worked at Little Dot and Channel 4)
- Albert Uderzo
- Jimmy Cobb
- Alan Parker
- Terry Jones
- Carl Reiner
- Kirk Douglas
- Sean Connery
- John Hume
- Ruth Bader Ginsberg
- Terence Conran
- JJ Williams
- Nobby Stiles
- Nicholas Parsons
- Tim Brooke Taylor

Best of 2019 and links to earlier Bests Of
Coincidence No. 202 – Kane
I finish watching ‘Citizen Kane’ for the first time in years, showing Enfant Terrible No. 1. I notice how the final scene in Xanadu with all his art and possessions boxed up must have inspired the final warehouse scene in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’.
Two minutes after the film finishes a message comes in to me from an old school friend commenting on the stuff I’ve been finding today as I sort out the attic and sharing with our Whatsapp group of schoolmates:
Ad – I’m thinking of that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Ark gets stored in a vast warehouse. Based on what’s emerging recently, I’m assuming your attic is something like that.


Alan Parker and the curse count

The Commitments (1991)
I met London-born director Alan Parker once – it was at the Dorchester hotel in Park Lane at some film-related event, around 2004. As we were walking out I took the opportunity to tell him a story about my younger son and The Commitments…
Like many parents I tended to show my children movies too young, forgetting the detail of the content. One afternoon I was sitting watching The Commitments with the pair of them, connecting them to the Irish half of their identity. Enfant Terrible No. 2 disappeared off mid-movie for a few minutes to run upstairs and get the stopwatch his Auntie Bernadette had recently bought him. He then reinstalled himself on the sofa and carried on watching, shiny new present in hand. After a while he turned to me (he’s about five at the time) and said: “Dad, do you realise it’s 3 minutes, 48 seconds since the last ‘Fuck’?” like that was some kind of record in linguistic restraint.
I find The Commitments a pretty flawless film, the music performed with brilliant energy, the casting of Andrew Strong as Deco key to the success of the movie.

Birdy (1984) – Nicolas Cage & Matthew Modine
Whilst I got as excited as the next kid about Bugsy Malone and the splurge guns, it was Birdy, which came out as I started uni, which made a real mark on my growing up. Matthew Modine’s performance is very moving, perfectly supported by a young Nicholas Cage.

Mississippi Burning (1988) Willem Dafoe & Gene Hackman
Mississippi Burning remains one of my favourite Alan Parker movies. Although it’s probably looked down on these days for having largely white saviours, it’s as cinematic and compelling as you could wish. It would make a great double bill with Ava DuVernay’s Selma. I’ll be watching it as a single bill this evening in memory and celebration of Alan Parker who went to the Big Studio in the sky yesterday. For me what he stood for was the ability to make entertaining and emotionally satisfying films which were accessible/mainstream and yet imaginative and substantial.
The Casting Game No. 402 – Six Nations Special

Liam Williams
AS

Spud in ‘Trainspotting’
(I worked with Ewen Bremner in one of his very first roles at Melrose Film Productions around 1989)
Coincidences No.s 288 & 289
No. 288 – Matt A: Locke
I am in half-sleep early this morning thinking about a presentation I am doing next week at the University of Westminster on Public Service Media and about the fact that my old Channel 4 colleague Matt Locke is also speaking that afternoon.
I have the radio on in that half-sleep and I hear the (place)name Matlock (in Derbyshire) just after I think about Matt Locke. And then in the traffic report the fact that the A6 is blocked by floodwater in Matlock comes up. And then in the news a short while after the death of a woman in Matlock, drowned in the flooding river Derwent, gets mentioned.

Today’s edition
No. 289 – Matt B: Lenehan
This one is typical of the type of coincidence where you haven’t thought about something or heard a word for ages and then it comes up twice or more in 24 hours.
I am at a seminar on James Joyce’s Ulysses at Senate House, University of London. We are talking about the Sirens chapter and the character of Matt Lenehan who in his diminutive creepiness reminds me of Peter Lorre’s character in Casablanca (Ugarte).
The next morning (today) I am finishing Patti Smith’s entertaining Year of the Monkey (her new poetic memoir, which revolves around semi-sleep states as in No. 288). It it she mentions that her late brother Todd’s favourite movie was The Beast with Five Fingers starring Peter Lorre.
I could feel the insidious fingers of memory rustling through the underbrush like the dismembered hand of the pianist scrabbling toward Peter Lorre’s throat in The Beast with Five Fingers.
(Good sentence!)